Intellectual Capital of the European Universities

Abstract

Universities and churches are among the oldest institutions of the world. Their longevity is a direct result of their impressive intellectual capital, mostly the spiritual and emotional intellectual capital for churches and cognitive intellectual capital for universities. The purpose of this chapter is to present the main issues of defining and evaluating the intellectual capital of the European universities, and what are the challenges for university leadership to transform this intellectual capital into a competitive advantage on the European and global arena. The authors present the most significant intellectual capital models developed so far and the way some of them have been applied to universities. Finally, they present the entropic intellectual capital model as being the newest and the most powerful one. This model is based on a multilayer structure and on the multi-field organizational knowledge concept. The model is based on the theory of integrators that are powerful fields of forces acting upon the organization members in order to create synergy and performance.